Large and complex supply chains are typically managed by multiple planning organizations, each supporting one or more planning engines appropriate for the needs of the organization. For example, one organization might support a supply chain planner (SCP) engine, another might support a factory planner (FP) engine, and another might support yet another type of planning engine. As a result, matching of supply and demand, product allocation, and order promising and fulfillment tasks are likely to be managed using a variety of logically or geographically distributed planning engines. This presents numerous difficulties for customers and suppliers alike.
A lack of detailed visibility into extended supply chain operations often prevents companies from quoting accurate delivery dates and meeting customer orders in a timely manner. Even when there is adequate visibility, a lack of integration between front-end and back-end business objectives may result in lower margin products using up capacity, important market channels receiving worse service than less important market channels, and other sub-optimal commitments. Also, once delivery date and other commitments have been made, it is necessary to monitor the commitments throughout the production and logistics execution process to determine the effect of unexpected supply and demand changes. Accordingly, in a distributed supply chain planning environment, there exists a need for a single and consistent interface to the customer for order promising and fulfillment. The inability to provide such a capability negatively impacts order capture rates, delivery performance, and administrative costs associated with inventory, order processing, and other activities.
Despite numerous attempts in recent years, none have succeeded in creating an effective solution to manage order promising and fulfillment tasks across a network of computers in a distributed supply chain planning environment. While some companies have developed acceptable front-end or “customer-centric” solutions, and others have devoted tremendous energy to achieving suitable back-end supply chain optimization solutions, none have successfully integrated these front-end and back-end solutions to intelligently manage order promising and fulfillment tasks in this environment. As a result, for example, companies routinely over-promise and then lose money attempting to fulfill the commitments they have made, usually with mixed success. To compete effectively in the growing global Internet-based economy, companies must be able to make accurate commitments, aligned with business objectives of the company, and to fulfill their commitments in an efficient and profitable manner.
Furthermore, in such multi-enterprise endeavors, it is often economically or at least politically infeasible to completely re-deploy systems throughout the supply chain. Thus, for a solution system to be routinely deployable in most situations, it must have the ability to accommodate existing systems such that their capabilities are extended while allowing more sophisticated replacement systems to be subsequently introduced. The solution system must ultimately be able to productively co-exist with such existing or replacement systems. Previous techniques for the management of order promising and fulfillment are inadequate to meet these needs.